A humorous view of politics, religion, human behavior, and insights toward everyday happenings by a single guy living in downtown Chicago.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Prik?

It was, like, a grillion degrees below zero outside this weekend so I certainly didn’t feel like going out to get groceries. Time to take stock of the pantry and see what I could come up with.

Our grandmothers were awfully good at doing that, it seems. They could be presented with what were seemingly bare cupboards, have a bunch of hungry tummies to feed, and emerge with a substantial meal to feed the family. All without using measuring cups or microwaves.

So I took stock. I had one frozen chicken breast. I had some frozen Asian-style mixed vegetables. Then, I remembered that about two years ago I had gone a little overboard with ordering Thai spice pastes and had about a dozen little tins of them in various varieties. I also had the requisite can of coconut milk and I always have plenty of fish sauce on hand. (Who doesn’t?)

7 Comments:

I took a cooking class in Thailand during both of my visits there. Our instructor informed us that 'prik' is the Thai term for chili or pepper. Thai chili pepper is pronounced: Prik ki nu in Thai. He added, amusingly and obviously savvy to the scatalogical meaning of this word to those of us English-speaking members of his class, that the hottest form, the Bird's Eye Chili Pepper, phrik khii nuu, is known among the Thais as (พริกขี้หนู, literally "mouse shit chili")! This particular Thai pepper (prik) is relatively strong at 50,000 to 100,000 on the Scoville heat scale, yet, in comparison, a habanero pepper still comes out on top over the Thai 'mouse shit' prik at 100 - 350K Scoville units. (A very nice Scoville rating chart is presented on Wikipedia in case anyone is interested:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale